How to Write a Hotel Amenities RFQ: A Tender Specification Template

When a hotel group or a distributor sends ten suppliers the same vague request — 'please quote dental kits, slippers and soap' — the ten quotations that come back will describe ten different products. One quotes an 18 g handle, another a 12 g; one includes a 10 g tube, another a 5 g sachet; one packs 200 sets per carton, another 500. Every line is defensible, and none of them are comparable. An RFQ for hotel amenities exists to remove exactly these gaps. This guide gives you the structure we wish every buyer sent us: what to specify line by line, what carton data to demand, and how to compare the bids that come back.

1. Start with the programme, not the items

Before any SKU line, state the context that drives specification: property type and star rating, number of rooms, annual occupancy, room types the programme covers (standard, suite, accessible), and whether the quote is for one hotel or a rolling group contract. Suppliers price differently against a 200-room single property than against a 2,000-room annual agreement, and telling them which one you are avoids re-quoting later.

2. One line per SKU — with these fields

Each amenity gets its own numbered line. A usable line reads like this, not like a product name:

The annual quantity line is the one buyers most often omit. Without it, every supplier assumes a different volume and the comparison is meaningless. Ask for tiered pricing — for example at 10,000, 30,000 and 60,000 pcs — so you can see how far the price actually falls with commitment.

3. Demand carton data with the quote

Unit price is only half of a quote. The other half is what a container actually holds. Require every bidder to state, per SKU: pieces per carton, carton dimensions in centimetres, and gross weight per carton. With those three numbers you can compute how many cartons fit your container, your freight per piece, and your true landed cost. Two quotes 8% apart at unit price regularly invert once freight and packing density are included — see our guide to wholesale quotes for worked examples.

4. Compare bids at landed cost per occupied room

• Land each quote: unit price + freight + duties, divided by annual occupied room-nights.
• Normalise contents: if one dental kit includes a 10 g tube and another a 5 g sachet, price the difference separately.
• Score the soft factors that recur: sample turnaround, documentation quality, response time and carton marking accuracy.
• Check what is excluded — mould fees, plate charges and freight surcharges are where a cheap quote stops being cheap.

A tender that asks for this structure takes half a day to write and saves weeks of back-and-forth. Suppliers, in turn, can answer every line without guessing — which is also why a complete RFQ usually gets sharper pricing than a vague one. Send us your specification and we will quote line by line, flag anything we cannot meet, and include carton data for every SKU.